The Mixed Stomach

When it comes to Ecuadorian food, it’s really a mixed bag. But since the ultimate bag is my stomach, it is a mixed stomach. Some things in Ecuador are amazing. A couple things are not to my taste. But the majority of traditional Ecuadorian cooking is fine. It’s not bad, it’s just not… flavorful. Sometimes my tongue screams, “Discover cumin and garlic and oregano!”

So for my tastes, which I am sure differ from those of the Ecuadorian people, I would group Ecuadorian foods into three major categories: the good, the bad, and the bland.

The good: First and foremost, the fruits here are varied and wonderful. Some of them are very sweet, like maracuyá (passion fruit). Others are very tart, like taxo (I don’t know it’s English name). Some of them are both sweet and tart, like uvillas (which I have seen translated as gooseberries, but when I think of gooseberries it’s not this.)

And as the fruits are so good, so are the juices of those fruits. That’s not a surprise, right? But along with fruit juices, you know what else is just better here? Powerade. They have better flavors of Powerade in Ecuador. Instead of fruit punch, you have tropical fruits and it tastes better. Instead of whatever our orange one is, here it is maracuyá citrus. The addition of the maracuyá flavor (chemical no doubt) just improves it. You go Powerade!

Leaving drinks, encebollado is a seafood soup. It is very good, and it is served with lime and a lime juicer. You can add your freshly squeezed lime juice to taste. Sour soups are amazing.

Breads are wonderful here in much the same way that they are at home. But here, you can buy small fresh breads (like croissants about 1.5 times the size) at most any corner minimarket. Or you can go to a panaderia, a bakery, and buy them there.

Chifa is a genre of cuisine. It is Chinese food. But it is more properly a fusion of Chinese and Peruvian food. Chifa is generally built around a serving of chaulafan. This is fried rice, and it is dark and usually has some meat in it. Often that is shrimp, but it could be something else. Then you can get something along side your chaulafan which is similar to the kinds of things you get at Chinese restaurants in America. There are chicken dishes, or pork, or seafood, or beef. They come in flavorful sauces and with lots of vegetables. But here is where it gets weird. At the chifa place we tried, this is also served with French fries. (They call them papas which means potatoes.) Don’t misunderstand, it is very good. But I am unused to serving both rice and French fries as sides (or maybe the rice is the entrée and the meat is the side) on the same plate.

Pizza is good enough here to be on the good list. The toppings are great. The cheese is mozzarella which is very similar to, but slightly different from, the mozzarella to which I have become accustomed. It has a slight aroma of being a goat cheese rather than a cow cheese. (Why don’t we say cow cheese. We say goat cheese if it comes from a goat. But we don’t mention the cow when the milk came from a cow. We just call it cheese. Are cows missing out on their right to recognition? Then again, maybe it is like not putting a little two on a square root sign. It is the default, so we don’t bother.) The thing that holds pizza back in Ecuador from being as good as at home is the sauce. The sauces aren’t as seasoned. There is oregano, but not as much oregano. There is garlic, but not as much garlic. In fact, there isn’t even as much sauce. More sauce, please!

Chocolate is certainly a thing here. In Ecuador it is very high in cocoa content, and also expensive in comparison to other Ecuadorian prices. But if you like chocolates that have a lot more chocolate than you are used to in American candy, then it is for you.

The bad: I personally did not like ceviche. I know it has many devotees and I don’t want to say it isn’t good. I will just say it isn’t good to my tastebuds. But it is something you should try, because you might love it. Alrica enjoys it. What is ceviche? It is fish, but rather than cooking it (denaturing it with heat) you soak it in citrus juice. This also denatures it. There is some debate about whether or not it eliminates all the bacteria. After it is denatured, various spices like chili pepper and garlic are added. (See, they do know about garlic.) And it is often served with chopped onions in it. And I like chili peppers and garlic and onions. But I still didn’t like ceviche. More than the sum of its part, as the old saw says. (I know saws don’t talk.)

Next up, lemonade. Okay, this shouldn’t properly be in the bad category, because bad isn’t the right word. When you order limonada at a restaurant in Ecuador, there’s no sugar in it. It is lemon juice (or maybe lime juice) and probably water. But you better be ready for sour!

I ordered habas con queso which literally translates to beans with cheese. I was very curious as to how this would be prepared? How would the cheese be incorporated. What kind of sauce would it be in. I figured it would be like rice and beans. Rice and beans is not literally merely rice and beans. There are other things in it.

Why is this even a meal?

 

Boy, was I wrong. Habas con quest is entirely literal. I got a plate of boiled lima beans with a thick slice of queso fresco sitting on top. Not shredded on top. One thick slice. Now I like beans, but in the rankings of the beans of the world, I think many people would agree with me that lima beans sit at or near the bottom of any such list. Still, even with the world’s worst bean, you could do all kinds of interesting things with them. You could at least boil them in water that had seasoning in it. But no, these beans were cooked and that’s all you can say about them. I like queso fresco, but it cannot save a plate full of unappetizing grass-colored lima beans.

The bland: I find the majority of traditional Ecuadorian cooking to fall in this category. It’s kind of like when you are in London and you wonder why don’t the British season anything. Well, the British and the Ecuadorians are flavor soul mates.

Before I talk about specific Ecuadorean dishes, let me talk about rice. Most dishes are served with rice. Plain rice. Plain white rice. This would be great if, like when you go to an Indian restaurant, there were plenty of sauces on the other parts of the meal that you mix with the rice and eat all together. I’m sure you can guess what I am about to say. That is not the case here. There isn’t enough sauce to mix with all that rice. And there isn’t enough flavor in the sauces to make the rice, well, interesting.

Menestra is the kind of dish I should love. Its main ingredient is lentils. (I’ve read that it can be beans instead, but so far I have only had it with lentils.) Now, I like lentils. And menestra has those lentils cooked in a brown sauce. It is served, you guessed it, with rice, and usually some meat. Either you get a piece of chicken or a slice of beef. It’s so close to being good, but there just isn’t enough seasoning to make the lentils exciting. And then the rice just drags it further down into blandness.

Mote is popular here. You know how grits are made from corn, but if you looked at them, or ate them, you wouldn’t immediately know it was corn. That’s mote. It is like hominy. It’s corn kernels that have been peeled and boiled. (I’m not sure which comes first.) It is chewy in an unexpected way, and it isn’t super flavorful. Usually mote is served with some sort of meat.

Locro de papa is a potato and cheese soup. We held out high hopes that this would be the traditional Ecuadorean food that tipped the scales toward yummy. But it didn’t. It’s fine, but it’s not amazing. Locro de papa is usually served with sliced avocado, so that has some flavor.

It looks like it's going to be good

 

I know you’ll think this is lame, but one of my favorite meals in Quito has been fried chicken at KFC. Why? Because they use the exact secret mix of eleven herbs and spices that Colonel Sanders formulated all those years ago. And that’s about ten herbs and spices more than I get in anything else.

But I wouldn’t say my mixed stomach is suffering. I get enough food and it is plenty nutritious. It’s really my tongue that dreams of something better.